MSS: Bobby Savulich

Bobby Savulich is inviting his fellow professional swimming colleagues to a meet next month, the first of its kind in the United States to be strictly for professional swimmers. Savulich talks about his goals for the meet, who's coming and whether the idea could expand.

Show Transcript: (Note: This is an automated service where some typos and grammatical errors may occur.)

Peter Busch: This is The Morning Swim Show for Friday, October 28th 2011. I'm your host Peter Busch. In the FINIS monitor today we'll talk to Bobby Savulich. He's spearheading a new pro swim league in the US and he's in the FINIS monitor right now from Ann Arbor, Michigan to talk about it. Hey Bobby, welcome to The Morning Swim Show. How are you?

Bobby Savulich: Doing well, Peter. How are you?

Peter Busch: Good. I know you just swam at Pan-Am Games. I want to ask you about that in a second but first tell us about this swim league.

Bobby Savulich: Well, pretty much what we're trying to do is just grow the sport, create some excitement. What we're doing is inviting all the pros from around the country and even around the world and we'll split them up into two teams, kind of east versus west thing, and the reason we made it into a dual meet is because when I think of the most exciting type of meets I mainly think of dual meets and I think that professionals miss that team atmosphere, swimming on a team. I think it would be great for not only just the swimmers, get them a little bit more financial opportunity as they're going to have price money and great races for them but it will be great for new fans for the sport. I think it's hard for people that don't have a relative or a friend in the sport to come and watch a meet when there are 1500 individuals there for themselves. I think what this meet will do is create teams where people can cheer for them and it will be viewer-friendly in the fact that it will be short and the races and the points matter, and overall just try to do something fun and just grow the sport.

Peter Busch: Obviously when you're talking pros, they want to get paid. How much can you offer them?

Bobby Savulich: Right now we have about $8000 raised for everybody and one of the people that really made this possible was a private donor who's a parent of Club Wolverine who goes by the name of Wei Wu [phonetic] and he donated a large portion of it and we have a few sponsors that put up the rest. Right now we have - first place is $300, second place is $150, and third place is $50 and that will be for all 16 events. Something that's pretty unique about this is we're not going to have any mile, we're not going to have the 800, we're not going to have the 400 IM, we're cutting out all the long distance events, we're going to add the short relays and the 50s of strokes. It's going to be a pretty cool event and something that hasn't really been done before and it's just going to be short, fast, and fun swimming,

Peter Busch: I like the idea - don't get me wrong - I want to see swimming grow for sure but $8000 realistically is not going to -- $300 for a winner is not going to bring the top names to the meet, so obviously we want to get this to a different level but have you had some challenges reaching out to like a Nathan Adrian or something like that, him just going "Look, I'm not going to fly across the country for $300."

Bobby Savulich: Actually the swimmers are the ones that are behind this. There's no - when it comes to the sponsorship money there's no ulterior motives behind. I'm kind of the meet director and a swimmer for this meet and as a meet director there's no money that's going to us. One of the things that I'm really proud of is a lot of swimmers have committed and they realize that it's not a ton of money, not going to make a living on going to this meet or if this does kick start something huge in the future but we've had a lot of support from guys, basically we're just asking them to pay for their flight and we're kind of hosting them with families and host them in our houses just to save on cost. We've had some pretty good names so far; guys like Darian Townsend, George Bovell, the Dunford brothers, Jean Basson, Bryan Lundquist, and a bunch of guys from MAC like Davis Tarwater and Nick Brunelli. The list goes on and these guys know that there's not a huge purse but it is something and something is better than nothing.

Peter Busch: So is there one meet that's already set up or starting with one meet and hoping to grow it into maybe like a series?

Bobby Savulich: Yes, that's correct. Right now we're just putting it out there. We'll have the one meet at Ann Arbor and the teams will just be dictated on the east versus west, like I said. Our vision for this is for this to be something where we could actually have Club Wolverine versus MAC versus Auburn versus FAST. I feel like there is enough pro swimmers out there now and there are enough teams that this could grow into something eventual where you could have the team you're actually competing and training go and swim against a different team and I think what that will create is a little bit of friendship, there will be more people involved, and who knows? Sky's the limit.

Peter Busch: You've got to start somewhere.

Bobby Savulich: Exactly.

Peter Busch: I noticed in your list you didn't say any women. Any women who signed up yet?

Bobby Savulich: No, we have no women signed up. Right now the reason for that is because Club Wolverine Elite, which is the team that I train for only have 12 men and we've really haven't been able to get interest from men at this point. Definitely not opposed to it, I think it's important to keep the meet short and a manageable time, about an hour and a half, max two hours, so if we were to add them we may want to keep them separate but as of now it's just men only.

Peter Busch: Men only club. Well I will circle back now and ask you how Pan-Am's were in Guadalajara. You got sixth in the 100 free - -you swam pretty well. What do you make of it?

Bobby Savulich: It was a good trip. I wasn't totally rested. I was kind of like a half taper and shave but I was pretty happy with my times. I definitely learned some new things, got some new confidence. I was pretty pleased with my performance on the 400 free relay. I got to go in third and trying to catch the guy next to me on Brazil who happened to be Cesar Cielo. I didn't exactly catch him but I was pretty happy with my time, the split that I went was way past the one I had before and it's just good for me to know that it's in there, I can do it, I was 48.3 with the relay start but it's in there, I've just got to find, I've just got to find it for this next summer.

Peter Busch: You didn't go Jason Lezak on him?

Bobby Savulich: I tried, I tried to do my best Lezak impersonation but it wasn't quite there - maybe next time.

Peter Busch: Very cool. So saving up for Trials is your big future meet?

Bobby Savulich: Of course.

Peter Busch: Good stuff. Well if people want to find out more about this swim league is there a website yet where they can check it out?

Bobby Savulich: Yes, right now it's on proswimleague.com. We'll have the results on there, there are the athletes, there's sponsors, and some press releases. Right now we're actually in the process of developing a newer website and it just keeps growing and growing and we're learning how to do these things every day and it seems like every day something - we get put in the positive direction, keep taking one more step forward to our goal. I'm always constantly getting emails from guys interested. It's really a cool thing because in the beginning I was contacting people, begging them to come to the meet; now it's established and it's out there - thanks to you guys for having me on the show. People are contacting me and asking me if they could come to the meet and it's been really exciting and it's been a really great thing.

Peter Busch: When's the meet?

Bobby Savulich: It's going to be November 16th and 17th. It starts at 8 pm and it's actually a Wednesday and Thursday.

Peter Busch: Well good for you for pioneering this. Thank you very much.

Bobby Savulich: Thank you.

Peter Busch: All right, that's Bobby Savulich joining us in the FINIS monitor today from Michigan. And that is it for today's show. I'm Peter Busch reminding you to keep your head down at the finish.